Cephalosporin-induced Hemolytic Anemia in a Sicilian Child.

A 27-month-old child developed acute hemolysis on two occasions after the administration of cephalosporin. On the first occasion, hemolysis was intravascular and was due to the formation of complexes between antibodies and the drug, which bound to red blood cells and caused severe hemolysis. On the second occasion, hemolysis was extravascular and was probably due to antibody-dependent cell mediated cytotoxicity. Marked increases in levels of CD19(+), and CD57(+) CD8(+) cells were detected among the subpopulations of the patient's lymphocytes but only in the level of CD19(+) cells from the patient's father, after incubation of a sample of whole blood with a solution of cephalosporins. These results might explain the differences between the immune response of the patient and those of other members of his family and of an unrelated control

perceiving animacy and arousal in transformed displays of human interaction

When viewing a moving abstract stimulus, people tend to attribute social meaning and purpose to the movement. The classic work of Heider and Simmel [1] investigated how observers would describe movement of simple geometric shapes (circle, triangles, and a square) around a screen. A high proportion of participants reported seeing some form of purposeful interaction between the three abstract objects and defining this interaction as a social encounter. Various papers have subsequently found similar results [2,3] and gone on to show that, as Heider and Simmel suggested, the phenomenon was due more to the relationship in space and time of the objects, rather than any particular object characteristic. The research of Tremoulet and Feldman [4] has shown that the percept of animacy may be elicited with a solitary moving object. They asked observers to rate the movement of a single dot or rectangle for whether it was under the influence of an external force, or whether it was in control of its own motion. At mid-trajectory the shape would change speed or direction, or both. They found that shapes that either changed direction greater than 25 degrees from the original trajectory, or changed speed, were judged to be "more alive" than others. Further discussion and evidence of animacy with one or two small dots can be found in Gelman, Durgin and Kaufman [5] Our aim was to further study this phenomenon by using a different method of stimulus production. Previous methods for producing displays of animate objects have relied either on handcrafted stimuli or on parametric variations of simple motion patterns. It is our aim to work towards a new automatic approach by taking actual human movements, transforming them into basic shapes, and exploring what motion properties need to be preserved to obtain animacy. Though the phenomenon of animacy has been shown for many years, using various different displays, very few specific criteria have been set on the essential characteristics of the displays. Part of this research is to try and establish what movements result in percepts of animacy, and in turn, to give further understanding of essential characteristics of human movement and social interaction. In this paper we discuss two experiments in which we examine how different transformations of an original video of a dance influences perception of animacy. We also examine reports of arousal, Experiment 1, and emotional engagement in Experiment 2

Vitamin D3: an ever green molecule.

Vitamin D3 is a key regulator of vertebrates homeostasis. It is synthesized from the precursor 7-dehydrocholesterol upon UVB exposure in the skin and then hydrolyzed in the liver in position 25, to be finally converted into its active form, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25(OH)2D or calcitriol), in the kidneys. The biological activity of this molecule depends on its binding to the nuclear receptor VDR, which binds VDRE once complexed with RXR-alpha. Despite being present in different types of food, the best way to assume it at physiological levels remains the exposure to UVB radiation at certain hours of the day and at particular angles of the Earth's crust. There is plenty of evidence that altered levels of vitamin D3 are associated with pathological conditions, such as osteoporosis, cancer, immunological and infectious diseases. In this review, we discuss vitamin D3 metabolism, its role in several diseases and the link between vitamin D3 and immune cells

Defective Function of the Fas Apoptotic Pathway in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus Correlates with Age at Onset

The Fas death receptor triggers lymphocyte apoptosis through an extrinsic and an intrinsic pathway involving caspase-8 and -9 respectively. Inherited defects of Fas function are displayed by a proportion of patients with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) especially those with a second autoimmunity (T1DM-p). This study assesses activation of both pathways in Fas-resistant (FasR) patients to localize the defect. 21/28 (75%) T1DM-p, 14/50 (38%) T1DM, and 7/150 (5%) controls were FasR. Analysis of the 35 FasR patients and 20 Fas-sensitive (FasS) controls showed that caspase-9 activity was lower in T1DM-p and T1DM than in controls, whereas caspase-8 activity was lower in T1DM-p than in T1DM and the controls. Single patient analysis showed that 16/35 patients displayed defective activity of one (FasR1), whereas 19 displayed normal activity of both caspases (FasR2) Ages at onset of diabetes mellitus in T1DM and the second autoimmune disease in T1DM-p were lower in FasR than in FasS patients. All FasR1 patients developed diabetes mellitus before the age of 9 years, whereas a later onset was displayed by 26% FasR2 and 53% FasS patients. These data show that defective Fas function may involve both the extrinsic and intrinsic pathway in T1DM and severity correlates with the precocity of the autoimmune attack and its tissue polyreactivity

Detection of bcl-2 rearrangement in mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphomas from patients with hepatitis C virus infection

Lette

High levels of osteopontin associated with polymorphisms in its gene are a risk factor for development of autoimmunity/lymphoproliferation

The autoimmune/lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS) displays defective function of Fas, autoimmunities, lymphadenopathy/splenomegaly, and expansion of CD4/CD8 double-negative (DN) T cells. Dianzani autoimmune/lymphoproliferative disease (DALD) is an ALPS variant lacking DN cells. Both forms have been ascribed to inherited mutations hitting the Fas system but other factors may be involved. A pilot cDNA array analysis on a DALD patient detected overexpression of the cytokine osteopontin (OPN). This observation was confirmed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) detection of higher OPN serum levels in DALD patients (n = 25) than in controls (n = 50). Analysis of the OPN cDNA identified 4 polymorphisms forming 3 haplotypes (A, B, and C). Their overall distribution and genotypic combinations were different in patients (N = 26) and controls (N = 158) (P <.01). Subjects carrying haplotype B and/or C had an 8-fold higher risk of developing DALD than haplotype A homozygotes. Several data suggest that these haplotypes influence OPN levels: (1) in DALD families, high levels cosegregated with haplotype B or C; (2) in healthy controls, haplotype B or C carriers displayed higher levels than haplotype A homozygotes; and (3) in AB and AC heterozygotes, mRNA for haplotype B or C was more abundant than that for haplotype A. In vitro, exogenous OPN decreased activation-induced T-cell death, which suggests that high OPN levels are involved in the apoptosis defect